LEGION BASEBALL: Hampton settles in, Bears beat Oneida

GREENVILLE WOOD BAT CLASSIC

Published
4:50 pm CDT, Saturday, June 11, 2016

Pitcher Brandon Hampton settled in and helped the Metro east Bears to a victory over Oneida Saturday in the Greenville Wood Bat Classic. Hampton is shown in action during high school season pitching for Civic Memorial. less

Pitcher Brandon Hampton settled in and helped the Metro east Bears to a victory over Oneida Saturday in the Greenville Wood Bat Classic. Hampton is shown in action during high school season pitching for Civic ... more

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Pitcher Brandon Hampton settled in and helped the Metro east Bears to a victory over Oneida Saturday in the Greenville Wood Bat Classic. Hampton is shown in action during high school season pitching for Civic Memorial. less

Pitcher Brandon Hampton settled in and helped the Metro east Bears to a victory over Oneida Saturday in the Greenville Wood Bat Classic. Hampton is shown in action during high school season pitching for Civic ... more

LEGION BASEBALL: Hampton settles in, Bears beat Oneida

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GREENVILLE — Metro East Bears pitcher Brandon Hampton had a few balls hit hard in the first inning but was also the victim of a couple unfortunate bounces. The Edwardsville Post 199/Alton Post 126 hurler was running up against it in the pitch count, and on a hot, steamy day, the Bears southpaw somehow had to sweat and gut out some innings and do so with minimal pitches.

Hampton settled in, and the Bears offense got going and plated eight unanswered runs in a 8-3 victory against Oneida Post 727 in the semifinals of the Greenville Wood Bat Classic Saturday afternoon at Robert E. Smith Field.

Jake Garella led the charge by going 3-for-4 with a double and two RBI, Chance Foss and Mitchell Krebs each had two hits and two key two-out RBI singles and Tyler Stamer reached base three times, including a two-run double in the fifth inning.

The game was called after five and a half innings because of a time limit.

The Bears (5-0) was set to play in the championship game at 8:15 Saturday night against Mattoon, an 11-0 winner over Highland in the second semifinal Saturday.

Hampton (2-0), who scattered seven hits and allowed three runs, including two in the first inning, walked two and struck out six in five innings. But he was through 75 pitches after three innings, and on a hot day, he needed to change his approach.

“I just had to three strikes. I knew three runs wasn’t going to beat us with our good offense,” Hampton, a Civic Memorial hurler, who finished with 96 pitches, said. “I just tried to keep the ball down.”

So really nothing changed for Hampton except for some better fortune. He retired eight of the final nine batters he faced, and the lone base runner that reached was an infield single.

“I thought I was a little unlucky early,” Hampton said. “… But we’ve got the best hitters in the area, I think, and three runs never is going to beat us. All I had to do was get my pitch count down and trust my defense.”

And the second time through the order, the Bears were able to get to Oneida starter Kaine Sundquist. First, for three runs in the second on RBI hits by Garella, Foss and Krebs to tie the game 3-3, then two in the fourth on back-to-back RBI hits from Cole Cimarolli (triple) and Garella (double) to give Metro East the lead for good and then three more in the fifth highlighted by Tyler Stamer’s two-run double into the left-center field gap off reliever Billy Comer.

“We’re a good-hitting team, and I think we showed it today,” said Garella, who will attend St. Louis University in the fall. “It took a few innings to figure it out, but we put some good swings on the ball, hit some good pitches and came back and won.

“When we were down 2-0 (in the first inning), I was not scared at all losing this game. Pitching, they fought through it. Hampton fought through those two runs, threw a good game and then we did pretty well.”

Despite allowing two first-inning runs, Hampton was able to limit the damage with two called third strikes on batters.

“I told Brandon today it could have been worse, but he hung in there out there today,” Bears manager Ken Schaake said. “He did not have his best breaking pitch, but hung in there and made the pitches when he needed to. That first inning could have been a lot worse, but he kept the ball it needed to be for us to make plays and kept us in the game there. If it had got up to 5-, 6-0, that’s going to be a tough one. But if it’s only two, and even when it got up to three, we could still do some running and be aggressive on the bases.

“It was the second time through the order that we started to it the ball a little bit harder.”